Chapter Nineteen
The Incorporation of
America, 1865–1900
Part One:
Introduction
The Incorporation of America,
1865–1890
What does this painting indicate about
the incorporation of America?
Chapter Focus Questions
What led to the rise of big business and the
formation of the national labor movement?
How was southern society transformed?
What caused the growth of cities?
What was the Gilded Age?
How did education change?
How did commercial amusements and organized
sports develop?
Part Two:
American Communities
Packingtown, Chicago, Illinois
Packingtown mirrored the industrial age.
It attracted immigrants from all over Europe, offering them jobs
based on skill, tenure in America, and low wages.
The immigrant groups settling in the Chicago
neighborhood maintained their ethnic identities and
institutions.
The one common meeting place was the saloon.
The meatpacking houses were a model of monopoly
capitalism with huge, specialized factories that polluted
the Chicago River and air.
Spurred by technology, the Chicago meatpacking
companies controlled all aspects of the industry.
Part Three:
The Rise of Industry,
the Triumph of
Business
Revolutions in Technology and
Transportation
The post-Civil War era saw a tremendous boom in
business and technology. Inventors like Alexander
Graham Bell and Thomas Edison brought new
products to Americans.
By 1900, Americans had produced over 4,000 cars.
In 1903, the Wright Brothers pioneered airplane flight.
Railroads stimulated development, creating a
national market.
Industry grew at a pace previously unimaginable.
Patterns of Industry
Map: Patterns of Industry, 1900
Industrial manufacturing concentrated in the
Northeast and Midwest.
Mechanization Takes Command
The second industrial revolution was based on the
application of new technology to increase labor
productivity and the volume of goods.
By the early 20th century, the United States
produced one-third of the world’s industrial goods.
Continuous machine production characterized many
industries.
Coal provided the energy for this second industrial
revolution.
Assembly line production, beginning with meatpacking, spread throughout American industry.
Expanding the Market for Goods
New techniques for marketing and merchandising
distributed the growing volume of goods.
Rural free delivery enabled Sears and Montgomery Ward
to thrive and required that these companies set up
sophisticated ways of reaching their customers.
Chain stores developed in other retail areas, frequently
specializing in specific consumer goods.
Department stores captured the urban market.
Advertising firms helped companies reach customers.
Integration, Combination, and Merger
Business leaders tried to gain control over the
economy and to enlarge the commercial empire.
Periodic depressions wiped out weaker competitors
and enabled the survivors to grow to unprecedented
heights.
Businesses employed:
vertical integration to control every step of production
horizontal combination to control the market for a single
product.
The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) hampered
unionization but did not prevent the continued
consolidation of American business.
The Gospel of Wealth
American business leaders saw their success as an
indication of their own personal virtues.
A “gospel of wealth” seemed to justify ruthless
financial maneuvering by men like Jay Gould.
More acceptable was the model presented by
Andrew Carnegie, a self-made multimillionaire who
brought efficiency to the steel industry.
Captains of industry seemed to fulfill the lessons of
Charles Darwin—survival of the fittest.
Part Four:
Labor in the Age of Big
Business
The Wage System
In the late nineteenth century, the American labor
force was transformed.
The number of Americans working for wages dramatically
grew.
Immigrants met the demands of new industries.
Mechanization transformed labor by changing employeremployee relations and creating new categories of workers.
In the older trades such as machine tooling and
textiles, craft traditions were maintained while new
industrial systems were added.
New Opportunities and Old Obstacles
Women workers moved into clerical positions
created by the advent of the typewriter and
telephone, and into retail as salespeople.
Racism kept African Americans and Chinese out of
most skilled positions.
Factory work was a dangerous and tedious ten- to
twelve-hour stint.
Periodic depressions threw millions of workers out
of jobs.
The Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor, led by Terence V. Powderly,
tried with some success to mobilize labor to take
control of their own industries.
The Knights:
urged workplace cooperation as the alternative to the
wage system
set up small cooperatives in various industries
joined the fight for an 8-hour workday
Workers normally excluded from craft unions joined
the Knights, including unskilled workers, women, and
African Americans.
The Decline of the Knights of Labor
The Knights lost their crusade for an 8-hour
workday due to a violent incident at
Chicago’s Haymarket Square.
Employers pooled resources to rid their
factories of union organizers; the Knights lost
and the wage system won.
The American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor, led by Samuel
Gompers, organized skilled workers within the wage
system.
The AFL:
did not organize unskilled workers, females, or racial and
ethnic minorities
focused on short-term goals of higher wages, shorter
hours and collective bargaining.
Unlike other unions, the AFL did achieve a degree of
respectability.
Part Five:
The “New South”
An Internal Colony
Southerners like Henry Grady envisioned a “New
South” that would take advantage of the region’s
resources and become a manufacturing center.
Northern investors bought up much of the South’s
manufacturing and natural resources, often eliminating
southern competition.
Southern communities launched cotton mill campaigns
to boost the textile industry.
By the 1920s northern investors held much of the
South’s wealth, including the major textile mills.
For the most part, southern industry produced raw
materials for northern consumption and became the
nation’s internal colony.
Southern Labor
Most southern factories were white-only or else
rigidly segregated.
African Americans were allowed low-paying jobs with
railroads while African-American women typically
worked as domestics.
With the exception of the Knights of Labor, white
workers generally protected their racial position.
Wages were much lower for southerners than outside
of the region, a situation that was worsened by
widespread use of child and convict labor.
The Transformation of Piedmont
Communities
The Piedmont (the area from southern Virginia through
northern Alabama) developed into a textile-producing center
with dozens of small industrial towns.
As cotton and tobacco prices fell, farmers sent their children
into the mills to pay off debts.
Gradually they moved into these company-dominated mill
villages.
Mill superintendents used teachers and clergy to inculcate the
company’s work ethic in the community.
Mill village residents developed their own cultures, reinforced
by a sense of connection to one another.
Part Six:
The Industrial City
The Foreign-Born Population
After the Civil War, European immigrants
settled primarily in the industrial districts of
the Northeast and Midwest.
Map: Population of Foreign Birth by Region,
1880
Populating the City
In the years after the Civil War, manufacturing moved
from rural areas to the city.
Millions of people followed these jobs to American cities,
making the United States an urban nation.
Many migrants came from rural areas in the United States.
Immigrants and their children accounted for most of the
urban population growth.
Immigrants came because of economic opportunities.
Success depended on the skills the immigrants brought with
them.
Groups tended to live near their countrymen and to work
in similar trades.
Newcomers frequently moved in search of better opportunities.
The Urban Landscape
People were packed into dumbbell tenements in workingclass neighborhoods.
Wealthy neighborhoods gleamed with new mansions,
townhouses, and brownstones.
Several cities experienced devastating fires, allowing
architects to transform the urban landscape as part of the
City Beautiful movement.
Streetcars and subways also altered the spatial design of
cities.
The extension of transportation allowed residential
suburbs to emerge on the periphery of the cities.
The City and the Environment
Despite technological innovations, pollution
continued to be an unsolved problem.
Overcrowding and inadequate sanitation bred a
variety of diseases.
Attempts to clean up city water supplies and
eliminate waste often led to:
polluting rivers
building sewage treatment plants
creating garbage dumps on nearby rural lands
Part Seven:
The Rise of Consumer
Society
“Conspicuous Consumption”
The growth of consumer goods and services led to
sweeping changes in American behavior and beliefs.
The upper classes created a style of “conspicuous
consumption“ in order to display their wealth to the
world around them.
They patronized the arts by funding the galleries and
symphonies of their cities.
They built vast mansions and engaged in new elite sports.
Mansions and wealthy hotels had great open windows so
that people passing by could marvel at the wealth
displayed within the building.
Women adorned themselves with jewels and furs.
Self-Improvement and the Middle Class
A new “middle class” developed its own sense of gentility.
Salaried employees were now part of the middle class.
Aided by expanding transit systems, they moved into
suburbs providing both space and privacy but a long
commute to and from work.
Middle-class women devoted their time to housework.
New technologies simplified household work.
The new middle class embraced “culture” and physical
exercise for self-improvement and moral uplift.
Middle-class youth found leisure a special aspect of their
childhood.
Life in the Streets
Many working-class people felt disenchanted amid
the alien and commercial society. To allay the stress,
they established close-knit ethnic communities.
Chinese, Mexicans, and African Americans were
prevented from living outside of certain ghettos.
European ethnic groups chose to live in closely-knit
communities.
Many immigrants came without families and lived in
boarding houses.
For many immigrant families, home became a
second workplace where the whole family engaged
in productive labor.
Immigrant Culture
Despite their meager resources, many immigrant
families:
attempted to imitate middle-class customs of dress and
consumption
preserved Old World customs
Immigrant cultures freely mixed with indigenous
cultures to shape the emerging popular cultures of
urban America.
Promoters found that young people were attracted to
ragtime and other African-American music.
Promoters also found that amusement parks could
attract a mass audience looking for wholesome fun.
Part Eight:
Cultures –
in Conflict,
in Common
Education
Stimulated by business and civic leaders and the idea of
universal free schooling, America’s school system grew
rapidly at all levels.
Only a small minority attended high school or college.
Supported by federal land grants, state universities and
colleges proliferated and developed their modern form, as did
the elite liberal arts and professional schools.
Professional education was an important growth area.
Women benefited greatly by gaining greater access to colleges.
Vocational education also experienced substantial expansion.
African American Education
African Americans founded their own colleges and
vocational schools.
Howard University, established for African
Americans, had its own medical school.
Educator Booker T. Washington founded the
Tuskegee Institute to press his call for African
Americans to concentrate on vocational training.
Washington encouraged African Americans to learn
practical, moral, and industrial trades.
Teachers and domestic servants were trained through these
new schools.
Leisure and Public Space
In large cities, varied needs led to the creation of
park systems.
The working class and middle class had different
ideas on using public spaces.
Park planners accommodated these needs by providing the
middle-class areas with cultural activities and the working
class with space for athletic contests.
Regulations such as no walking on the grass, picnicking,
or playing ball without permission were enforced in many
parks.
National Pastimes
Middle and working classes found common ground
in a growing number of pastimes.
Ragtime, vaudeville, and especially sports brought the two
classes together in shared activities that helped to provide a
national identity.
After the Civil War, baseball emerged as the
“national pastime” as professional teams and league
play stimulated fan interest.
Baseball initially reflected its working-class fans both in
style of play and in organization but soon became tied to
the business economy.
By the 1880s, baseball had become segregated,
leading to the creation of the Negro Leagues in the
1920s.
Part Nine:
Conclusion
The Incorporation of America
Media: Chronology